December 1999

This is the founders’ end-of-the-year statement and a few highlights of our activities this year. It suggests that TFF will promote reconciliation and forgiveness in the year 2000 and beyond. We suggest this theme because it has been singularly missing in the century and the very decade we are now leaving behind. We agree with Desmond Tutu that there can be no future without forgiveness. Hope for change and reconciliation are now the lenses through which the future must be imagined. Why? Because if we let the present global system of violence — against other humans, other cultures and Nature — continue unabated, it is unlikely that there will be anybody around to celebrate New Year 2100. The wonderful thing about forgiveness, reconciliation and hope is that we have to take the initiative ourselves; they cannot be demanded of somebody else. You cannot force another human being to forgive you;...

“We are seeing it for the umpteenth time in international conflict-management: when intellectual analysis and politics fall apart, cover it up with military potency and give it all a human face! One would like to believe that the West’s moral, legal and political conflict ‘management’ disaster in the Balkans and in Kosovo 1989–1999 would be debated throughout the West — democracies with freedom of speech. The silence about that failure, however, is roaring. It’s just the locals who won’t understand how well-meaning we were and are! But something else is happening: the disaster is turning into a recipe. Read the statements from leading ministers, top generals, the EU and NATO during the last six months. They invariably state ‘that we have learnt in Kosovo’ that we need more military capacity, more force. NATO’s Secretary-General, Lord Robertson, tells the world that ‘the time for a peace dividend is over because there...

MADRID- Americans are not good at giving away their territorial possessions, few though they’ve had. The renunciation of their ownership of the Panama Canal Zone has been handled with as much grace as a sack of potatoes. Refusing to attend if the ceremony were held at noon on December 31st as the treaty mandates, the celebratory party was advanced a couple of weeks to mid-December. Even then only ex-president Jimmy Carter, who in 1977 negotiated the treaty ending U.S. jurisdiction, made the relatively short journey. New situation, but the same reflexes. In the words of Ronald Reagan, who helped nearly cripple the young Carter presidency with a vitriolic anti-Canal Treaty campaign, “We built it, we paid for it, it’s ours”. But, despite all the second thoughts in Washington and the whispering campaign about a future Chinese grab for the canal via the Hong Kong company that has won the lease to...

LONDON- The Russian parliamentary election has well and truly knocked the pessimists off their perch. Few predicted that the Communist Party in these hard economic times would receive such a setback. The Russian voter, despite the total failure of capitalism to deliver the goods, has made it crystal clear that he is still in no mood to wind back the clock. Optimists can be forgiven for believing that democracy, like the stock market, appears to have entered an unprecedented benign era. There have been numerous setbacks, but it does seem true that this century has become, after all its failures of world war, extreme ideology and Cold War, the century of democracy. And now with Russia set to consolidate its young democracy, the 20th century is ending on an undoubted top C. Yesterday the New York-based Freedom House published its annual survey of democratic trends and concluded that “there were major...

Social Situation in Serbia and Its Influence on Political Situation in the Country Keywords at a round table in Backa Palanka, Serbia held on December 4th and 5th 1999 – “NGOs and politics – how to get to changes?” I have the unpleasant obligation to make you acquainted with the social situation of the citizens in Serbia, but it is not such a difficult task. Firstly, the data are accessible from International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent, Red Cross of Serbia, UNHCR, OCHA, UNESCO and NGOs from our country. By crossing of data bases, we got the relevant facts. Secondly, we know the real state because we live in Serbia and we feel that burden. The special problem is that the situation is becoming worse every day and that the known data has to be changed with the new one. It only shows the quick fall of standard...

Senate Vote Leaves the World a More Dangerous Place By David Krieger* President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation TFF adviser In failing to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the US Senate played partisan politics with an issue of utmost importance to the security of the US and the world. In observing the debates in the Senate on this issue, I was once again left with the impression that our Senators do not fully understand and do not particularly care that the rest of the world pays attention to what they say and do. Much of the world looks to the United States for leadership, but there is little to be found these days in the highest offices of our government. In 1995 I attended the Review and Extension Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). It was and remains clearly in the interests of...

15 Dec 1999 20:07:09 +1000 From: FoE Sydney – Nuclear Campaign <nonukes@foesyd.org.au> Dear All, A copy of this letter is to be given to Russian foreign minister Ivanov in the next 24 hours. It is adressed to Ivanov and Sergeyev rather than Yeltsin himself, as those individuals are more likely to be in control and may be more reasonable. It is now open to organisations signatures. (Individuals, please send your own faxes direct to US defence Secy Cohen and Sergeyev and Clinton on +1-703-695-1149 (Cohen) +7-095-205-4330 (Sergeyev) +1-202-456-2461 (Clinton)) It’s been revised in accordance with comments from a number of people and the text is now frozen unless someone picks up some absolutely egregious error. Please do sign both this and if you have not already done so, the large ‘Bill and Boris’ sign on which now has 460+ organisations signed on to it. That letters text can be found...

I have the unpleasant obligation to make you acquainted with the social situation of the citizens in Serbia, but it is not such a difficult task. Firstly, the data are accessible from International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent, Red Cross of Serbia, UNHCR, OCHA, UNESCO and NGOs from our country. By crossing of data bases, we got the relevant facts. Secondly, we know the real state because we live in Serbia and we feel that burden. The special problem is that the situation is becoming worse every day and that the known data has to be changed with the new one. It only shows the quick fall of standard of the citizens, among who are refugees in Serbia, too, and therefore we can speak about the real decline of one country which takes everything with itself like in a whirlpool. The parameters of the level of minimum of...

In failing to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the US Senate played partisan politics with an issue of utmost importance to the security of the US and the world. In observing the debates in the Senate on this issue, I was once again left with the impression that our Senators do not fully understand and do not particularly care that the rest of the world pays attention to what they say and do. Much of the world looks to the United States for leadership, but there is little to be found these days in the highest offices of our government. In 1995 I attended the Review and Extension Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). It was and remains clearly in the interests of the United States and all other countries in the world to prevent further proliferation of nuclear weapons. At that Treaty Conference...

“Given that democratic countries have free and independent media, President Clinton’s visit to Kosovo on November 23 would be a golden opportunity to take stock of the US-led Western policies to bring peace to the region. Here is a selection of questions with some media advisory. In other words, if I imagine I had been granted an interview as a journalist, this is what I would focus on,” says TFF director Jan Oberg. (1) Mr. President, US warplanes bombed Yugoslavia and the Kosovo province with you as the Commander-in-Chief of US forces. Does it worry you that the whole campaign was justified and conducted on the basis of what has turned out to be grossly mistaken or falsified information about a genocide planned by Belgrade? [During the campaign, President Clinton, Secretary Cohen and Secretary Albright are on record with figures of between 10,000 and 100,000 missing and probably killed in...

The Future of the United Nations System: Potential for the Twenty-First Century All desiring to be challenged to think creatively about potential for coping with a growing array of global problems will find this volume to be stimulating reading. Penetrating analyses of past and present experience in a broad array of “laboratories” in the UN system are pointed toward illuminating future potential. Twenty-two scholars from all continents contribute twelve chapters thatencompass prevention of violence, creating economic and social structures that sustain human fulfillment, sharing and protecting the commons and peace education. The search for future potential, based on experience in these twelve "laboratories", leads to sixty-six recommendations for new institutions and programs on issues that include controlling weapons, humanitarian intervention, collaboration between UN peacekeepers and NGOs, human rights, economic policies, advancement of women, refugees, ecological security, communications, and peace education. These recommendations are brought together in a concluding chapter and...